The statistical independence of time of every two adjacent bus links plays a crucial role in deciding the feasibility of using many mathematical models to analyze urban transit networks. Traditional research generally ignores the time independence that acts as the ground of their models. Assumption is usually made that time independence of every two adjacent links is sound. This is, however, actually groundless and probably causes problematic conclusions reached by corresponding models. Many transit assignment models such as multinomial probit-based models lose their effects when the time independence is not valid. In this paper, a simple method to predetermine the time independence is proposed. Based on the predetermination method, a modified capacity-restraint transit assignment method aimed at engineering practice is put forward and tested through a small contrived network and a case study in Nanjing city, China, respectively. It is found that the slope of regression equation between the mean and standard deviation of normal distribution acts as the indicator of time independence at the same time. Besides, our modified assignment method performs better than the traditional one with more reasonable results while keeping the property of simplicity well.
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